Impossibility Theorem Strikes Again: YouTube Deletes January 6th Committee Video
from the impossibility-theorem-never-fails dept
Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well says my impossibility theorem. And, basically every day we see more examples of this in action. The latest is that the NY Times reports how YouTube took down a video that the January 6th House Select Committee had posted to the site, detailing many of the lies Donald Trump made about the 2020 election.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot has been trying to draw more eyes to its televised hearings by uploading clips of the proceedings online. But YouTube has removed one of those videos from its platform, saying the committee was advancing election misinformation.
The excerpt, which was uploaded June 14, included recorded testimony from former Attorney General William P. Barr. But the problem for YouTube was that the video also included a clip of former President Donald J. Trump sharing lies about the election on the Fox Business channel.
It’s not difficult to figure out how this played out. Back in December of 2020, YouTube changed its policies to ban videos that claimed there was election fraud. You can agree or disagree with this policy, but YouTube realized that disingenuous smear merchants were spreading nonsense conspiracy theories leading to real world harm, and decided, reasonably, that they didn’t want it on the site.
Of course, that also makes things difficult when you have the January 6th Committee trying to show the kind of nonsense that Trump was spewing about the election, and they want that posted to YouTube. But, as YouTube notes, on a first glance, this content violates its policies.
“Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, if it does not provide sufficient context,” YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said in a statement. “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and have removed the video uploaded by the Jan. 6 committee channel.”
In other words, for all the claims of how “biased” these policies are, they also (once again) show how the same policies impact people across the political spectrum.
Of course, this kind of content moderation issue isn’t new. Indeed, one of the first big controversies around content moderation on YouTube came after Congress pressured the company to remove “terrorist” videos, with the end result being that those who were documenting war crimes found that their own accounts were shut down.
This is also why I wish that companies were more thoughtful in how they handled these decisions. While it’s understandable why a company would reasonably say it doesn’t want garbage election propaganda on its site, there are two associated risks with that. The first is that it removes people who are trying to document the speakers pushing that propaganda, as is the case here. And, of course, the second is that it may make it difficult in scenarios where there actually are problems with an election (which, to be clear, there remains no evidence for this in 2020), it will be that much more difficult to discuss it.
In other words, there is no easy answer here. And, yes, I know that supporters of Trump will insist that this is why YouTube shouldn’t takedown election propaganda under any circumstances, but their unfailing willingness to continue to push the completely baseless “big lie” is proof of why perhaps we shouldn’t be making it easier for gullible people to fall down that rabbit hole.
But, still, it does seem like there ought to be better ways of seeking out the difference between “promoting” dangerous behavior and “documenting” it.
Filed Under: big lie, congress, content moderation, donald trump, election disinformation, impossibility theorem, january 6th, january 6th committee, masnick's impossibility theorem
Companies: youtube
Comments on “Impossibility Theorem Strikes Again: YouTube Deletes January 6th Committee Video”
My suggestion...
I know this will be ignored by YouTube, but I think that if a video seems to fall foul of the ‘acceptable speech’ policy, it should be suspended and flagged for human review to be either reinstated or deleted within 24 hours. Of course, that’s not taking into account the fact that YouTube talks about ‘sufficient context’ whilst using bots that can’t perceive context at all, and thus lacks the common sense required to enact a scheme such as I’ve suggested.
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Easy enough to suggest, but difficult to implement at the scale of YouTube. Not there are 500 hours or more of videos per minute being uploaded to YouTube, that is several thousand per hour, and even with less than 1% flagged, that is a lot of videos to review.
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And the percentage that will get flagged for “unacceptable speech” is microscopic in comparison to the percentage that gets flagged for “copyright violation”. Question: when will you build a better strawman?
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YouTube does not review Videos flagged by content ID, therefore your point is irrelevant and misleading.
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ContentID is set up to identify potential copyright infringement, not potential violations of YouTube’s ToS, therefore your non-point is irrelevant and misleading.
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Disappear Him
And yet, Stacy Abrams videos are still available. The policy was designed to target one person that they hate, and one person only.
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Stacy Abrams had a legitimate complaint about the result of the election she lost: Her opponent (Brian Kemp) was also in charge of overseeing that election. Even if he didn’t overtly rig the election in his favor, he still took actions (e.g., voter roll purges) that likely affected the outcome of the election—which, again, he was both overseeing and competing in.
Donald Trump has no legitimate complaint about the result of the election he lost: No one has yet to produce any evidence that says he lost the election due to voting fraud. Over five dozen court cases failed to produce the evidence he says exists. And no down-ballot Republican has ever questioned whether their 2020 election victories, which came about from the same ballots and the same systems used in the presidential election, were somehow fraudulent or rigged.
But please, tell me again how the two situations are the same. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
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Donald Trump has no legitimate complaint about the result of the election he lost: No one has yet to produce any evidence that says he lost the election due to voting fraud.
As I’ve said before, Trump very likely lost in 2020 despite electoral fraud. 😉
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Or as I say, Trump had the odds in his favor in 2020 and he still lost!!!
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At least he fulfilled his promise to ‘Make America Great Again’ by leaving the Oval Office. 😅
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One person only? Odd, then, that there are so many whining about “censoring conservative views”. You’d think that the other people could get that one person’s views out around the policy.
… unless it’s about the message rather than the person.
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Right-whingers can never make an equivalence that isn’t a false one.
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Answer me this Koby, did Stacy Abrams lie about her election loss?
Unless you have been up Trump’s ass the last 2 years, there has not been a single shred of evidence that Trump’s loss wasn’t legitimate.
And to this day, Trump is still lying about voter fraud that didn’t happen.
But the funniest part about his fraud lies, the only fraud that was found and prosecuted, was all Republicans using dead relatives to vote, being registered to vote and voting in multiple states, etc. So all the election fraud was REPUBLICAN!!
Now to the infuriating part, there is more circumstantial evidence that Mitch McConnell rigged the election in his favor with the ES&S machines than any evidence that the Dominion machines were rigged. But only a few people are talking about that possibility. And that is one of the theories about why Mitch didn’t back Trump’s lie, because he doesn’t want people scrutinizing his own election.
For example, here are the vote tallies for just one county:
WOLFE COUNTY
Mitch Votes=1912
Registered GOP=943
McGrath Votes=945
Registered Dems=4527
This Twitter thread goes into the details of how McConnell’s election win seems highly unlikely.
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Unless you have been up Trump’s ass the last 2 years…
TBH, I think that’s exactly where Koby’s been. 😉
How is being on the Jan. 6 committee’s actual YouTube channel not enough context?! This shows their problem is not bias, just plain old incompetence.
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If You think congress is a reliable source, free from propagation of conspiracy theories and misinformation, I have a pile of bridges you can buy.
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If you believe that the members of the Jan. 6th Select Committee weren’t carefully chosen, I’ve a whole bunch of Grade I listed structures to sell to you.
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Benghazi, amirite?!
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I’d reckon the bot doesn’t factor that in, since that would mean that a legitimate account could get hacked and start sending out harmful content without it being caught right away.
And I wouldn’t really call it incompetence when a proper solution doesn’t exist at the moment.
Excuse me while I bookmark this so I can bring it up every time someone claims that only conservatives are “censored” on tech platforms.
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Wouldn’t do you any good as you’re not dealing with people arguing in good faith. They’ll either claim that it’s a valid takedown when it impacts someone they don’t agree with, or in this case argue that since the video was about ‘conservative’ lies and it was taken down it’s still an anti-conservative move.
Damn censorship
And the problem with policies like this is it kills discussion. Not just “misinformation”.
As seen with this video being bonked, discussing is banishment.
Because there’s a LOT of ground between “big lie” “stop the steal” and “nothing”.
Though no logical person thinks the election was stolen many ‘things’ did happen, many more were ‘reported’ to have happened.
None of which has been discussed or debunked by anyone reliable.
Trashed ballots?
Such as in Pensilvania
https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/fbi-investigates-ballots-for-trump-found-in-pennsylvania-garbage/
Or in California
https://abc7.com/santa-monica-mail-ballots-trash-in/6884527/
Oklahoma, Illinois, Florida?
How about backdated mail? Hopkins Wasn’t the only one to make such a claim, but the sudden recanting should be considered concerning!
And any attempt to discuss any of it is quickly swept under the rug.
Maybe more people would be swayed Biden won by some sort of legitimate discussion; rather than simply claiming no-fraud and running away.
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Maybe more people would be swayed Biden won by some sort of legitimate discussion; rather than simply claiming no-fraud and running away.
But I’ve never claimed that there was no fraud and run away. I’ve always been consistent in my statements that Trump lost despite attempted electoral fraud (Hunter Biden laptop revelations, anyone?). As for ballots being found in the trash, it was obviously the result of postal workers breaking the law and violating their employment contracts. I would have been more concerned if the ballots had been filled out, but since they had yet to be delivered to homes when they were discovered, you’ll find it impossible to prove electoral fraud with regard to them.
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“People”. We are talking about a bunch of morons who can’t accept factual reality. Or perhaps you are suggesting that Barr lied? Or that every damn investigation into irregularities doesn’t come up with any kind of evidence of systemic voting fraud.
I have a question for you, have you looked into voting irregularities in other elections before 2020? Because if you haven’t you have no baseline at all to compare the irregularities to. And that baseline have to be adjusted to the fact that the 2020 election was the most monitored one in the whole history of the US.
And this is why there is no legitimate discussion, people like you who think anecdotal evidence is some kind of proof of widespread voter fraud that made Biden the president. Where a fucking mint becomes proof of election fraud because the stupid haters just have to make shit up to validate their broken perception of reality while destroying peoples lives.